President Donald Trump is refusing to pick a side in the escalating bidding war between Paramount Skydance and Netflix to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery.
President Trump told reporters on Monday that neither the leaders of Paramount nor Netflix are particularly great friends of his.
“I know the companies very well. I know what they are doing. But I have to see. I have to see what percentage of market [share] they have. We have to see the Netflix percentage of market [share], Paramount percentage of market [share]. I mean, none of them are particularly great friends of mine. You know, I want to do what’s right. It’s so very important to do what’s right,” he said.
As noted by Variety, the president’s comments came hours after “David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance launched a direct-to-shareholders hostile takeover effort for WBD, offering $30 per share in an offer with an enterprise value of $108.4 billion.”
“That came after Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery announced an $83.7 billion agreement, under which the streamer would buy WB’s studios, HBO, HBO Max and games divisions,” added Variety.
The president, at the very least, has signaled his willingness to listen to Netflix’s side of the argument while cautioning the streaming giant could face regulatory trouble.
Speaking with reporters on the red carpet of the Kennedy Center Honors event in Washington, D.C., Trump confirmed that he met with Ted Sarandos ahead of Netflix’s negotiations with Warner Bros. Discovery, adding that the deal “could be a problem” due to potential antitrust legal challenges.
“I’ll be involved in that decision,” the president said, adding that Netflix’s proposed $83 billion deal for Warner Bros. will “go through a process” to “see what happens.”
The president also had kind words for Ted Sarandos, calling the co-CEO of Netflix “fantastic man.”
“I have a lot of respect for him, but it’s a lot of market share,” Trump said. “He’s a great person… He’s got a lot of interesting things happening aside from what you’re talking about, but it is a big market share. There’s no question about it. It could be a problem.”
Sarandos told investors on a call with Wall Street analysts last Friday that he believes the deal with Warner Bros. Discovery will close in 12-18 months.
“[We are] really confident that we’re going to get all the necessary approvals that we need,” Sarandos told analysts. “This deal is pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-worker, it’s pro-creator, it’s pro-growth.”
According to Variety, Sarandos conveyed to President Trump during their meeting that “even combined with Warner Bros. and HBO Max, Netflix would grow to be about as big as Google’s YouTube in the U.S. — and would still have less TV market share than other media conglomerates, according to a Bloomberg report.”
Prior to Netflix announcing a deal with Warner Bros., Paramount called the sales process unfair and bias, claiming that the “sales process has been tainted by management conflicts, including certain members of management’s potential personal interests in post-transaction roles and compensation as a result of the economic incentives embedded in recent amendments to employment arrangements.”
Warner Bros. Discovery shot back that its board “attends to its fiduciary obligations with the utmost care, and that they have fully and robustly complied with them and will continue to do so.”
On Monday morning, President Trump also rebuked Paramount after CBS aired a 60 Minutes segment featuring former MAGA firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
“Marjorie is not AMERICA FIRST or MAGA, because nobody could have changed her views so fast, and her new views are those of a very dumb person,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social account. “That was proven last night when washed up, Trump hating, 60 Minutes ‘correspondent,’ Lesley Stahl, who still owes me an apology from when she attacked me on the show (with serious conviction!), that Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP FROM HELL was produced by Russia, not Hunter himself (TOTALLY PROVEN WRONG!), interviewed a very poorly prepared Traitor, who in her confusion made many really stupid statements.”
Trump continued: “My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP” — and he opined that since the Ellisons bought the company, “60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!”
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